El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important driver of interannual variations in climate and ecosystem productivity in tropical regions. However, detailed information about this important phenomenon of the Indian Ocean is scarce. Consequently, the objective of this study is to improve understanding of the impact of warm event El Nino and cool event La Nina on annual tuna landings from th...

Radiocarbon (14C) content of surface waters inferred from a coral record from the Galapagos Islands increased abruptly during the upwelling season (July through September) after the El Nino event of 1976. Sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) associated with the upwelling season also shifted after 1976. The synchroneity of the shift in both 14C and SST implies that the vertical thermal structure of t...

Studies of rainfall variation generally focus on large areas. For example, in India, the area average monsoon rainfall series of the whole country or meteorological subdivisions are used. This would be of no use for local agriculture, particularly in places where rainfall is very high or very low, especially for crops like small cardamom and vanilla which are very sensitive to soil moisture and...

The size of the 300 mbar north circumpolar vortex, and its eastern, western, date line, and Greenwich hemisphere components, is estimated for the period 1963–2000 by planimetering the area poleward of 300 mbar contours in the main belt of westerlies on the mean-monthly polar stereographic analyses of the Institute of Meteorology of the Free University of Berlin. On the basis of the superposed e...

The objective of this study is to quantify the nature of the mechanisms of southern Africa rainfall variability, unrelated to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, by means of a simple empirical composite analysis, as a baseline for a more detailed study.

Three different classes of numerical models successfully predicted the occurrence of the El Niño of 1986-87 at lead times of 3 to 9 months. Although the magnitude and timing of predicted ocean surface temperatures were not perfect, these results suggest that routine prediction of moderate to lare El Niño events is feasible. The key to the success of the models lies in recognizing or simulating ...

A coupled atmosphere-ocean model is presented for El Niño and the Southern Oscillation that reproduces its major features, including its recurrence at irregular intervals. The interannual El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle is maintained by deterministic interactions in the tropical Pacific region. Ocean dynamics alter sea-surface temperature, changing the atmospheric heating; the resulting chan...

The impact of climate variability on the water cycle in desert ecosystems is controlled by biospheric feedback at interannual to millennial timescales. This paper describes a unique field dataset from weighing lysimeters beneath nonvegetated and vegetated systems that unequivocally demonstrates the role of vegetation dynamics in controlling water cycle response to interannual climate variabilit...